


That You May Be Without A Mate Until You Find Me

by CopperBeech



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Author detours briefly into a favourite rabbit hole, Awkward Blessing Requests, But it's right after the Flood ffs, Catharism, Comfort Sex, Crowley can't resist a little theatre, Crusades, Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Freeform, Doctor Faustus - Freeform, Drinking & Talking, Drunkenness, Elegiac, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Female Crowley, First Kiss, First Time, Forbidden Love, Genderfluid Crowley, Gratuitous Literature Major Shenanigans, Having Faith, Heresy, How Crowley claimed the Inquisition, Hundred Guineas Club, I've asked the Thing In My Head for more warm fuzzies, M/M, Mermaid Tavern, Montsegur, Nanny Crowley (Good Omens), Ovid, Pining, Post-Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), Post-Scene: St James's Park 1862 (Good Omens), Protective Crowley, Sadder than my usual, Scene: Crucifixion of Jesus 33 AD (Good Omens), Scene: Kingdom of Wessex 537 AD (Good Omens), Scene: Soho 1967 (Good Omens), Snake Crowley, Sonnets, Temptation of Christ, Tender Sex, The Flood (Good Omens), Unicorns, king arthur - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:47:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23217259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: It's just as easy for Crowley to be female as male. He doesn't switch up often. There are memories.Demons apparently could not only sing; they could weep. Crowley was trying to pretend those weren’t muted sobs, but didn’t resist when the angel’s arms went around her. “Don’t care how bloody bad they were. I should know. All the kids, angel… what’d She have against the kids? Yeah, they’re,“ trying to laugh, the smile was fairly ghastly, “annoying little prats but you know, you just tell ’em to bugger off  ‘n stop their noise, y’don’t drown ’em, an’ I can’t say it to anyone but you, Heaven’s all so bloody right, Hell’s just running the numbers, you’re the only other one who lives with ’em….”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 305
Kudos: 199





	1. Lost Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> There seems to be a bit of Fanon that the star-crossed Ineffables hitched a ride on the Ark, and I ran with it. I used _abaya_ , anachronistic as it is, to describe Crowley's garment, because it's the closest thing.
> 
> Female Crowley's a bit harder for me to write, but what the hell, let's stretch. I knocked the original Explicit rating down to Mature because although what happens in the first chapter is unambiguous, it's not that lengthy or specific and I started to get the feeling I was disappointing some people who were in the mood for a bit of smut. ;) Which isn't fair.
> 
> Be warned that this fic, originally a one shot, has become a Head Dump for all the author's historical swivets and plague-year angst.
> 
> If you like, share, reblog, comment!  
> Come say hello on Tumblr @copperplatebeech

Crowley was the only one who could handle the unicorn. Both of them had been skittish from the beginning; when the female broke and ran, Shem had managed to get hold of the male, hoping his presence would lure his mate back before the flood waters rose.

In retrospect, it might have been kinder to let him follow her. There weren’t going to be any little unicorns; they’d have had a few hours, a day or two perhaps, of final freedom, and what were two more deaths in the inexplicable slaughter that the Almighty was dealing out indiscriminately over the earth? At least they would have been together. Aziraphale had had nothing but time to ponder questions like this since the rains began; what it meant to be with someone you loved, the things it made bearable.

True, there were days when he and Crowley barely crossed paths, which was peculiar considering that they were on a vessel with only eight humans, of whom Aziraphale had been appointed the guardian. _Try not to fuck this one up,_ Gabriel had said acidly, a bit put out that he hadn’t gotten the assignment himself; there’d been scuttlebutt around Heaven for a while that the Almighty was saving up a special job for him.

If he’d had any idea that Aziraphale had escorted a maidenly Crowley, modestly muffled in a hooded black abaya, onto the Ark as his colleague Ashtoret (“we both issued in the same day from the hand of God” was stark truth, even if it conveniently avoided the matter of Crowley’s Fall, the apple business, the whole serpent thing), Gabriel would have been livid. Possibly that had made Aziraphale only more determined to do it. You were obliged to obey your superior in Heaven, but just because he technically outranked you (which hadn't always been the case), that didn’t mean you had to like him. Aziraphale didn’t mind being demoted over the sword business, but Gabriel was – well, a bit wearing.

He’d been filing reports dutifully. _The rains have stopped. Noah sent out a raven, as you instructed._ He couldn’t quite figure that one out. _The dove came back, but she was knackered, poor thing._ Crowley, who’d almost immediately taken charge of the animals’ care – some became quite ill from the fright and the crowding – had held the shivering little creature in a fold of her _abaya_ and fed it. Quiet miracles had kept all the animals alive, and they didn’t seem to care whether the miracles were Heavenly or Hellish. Noah’s family weren’t bothered about Crowley’s eyes, either; some of the Nephilim had been a bit peculiar looking too.

But the unicorn was pining. Aziraphale felt for him. At least the creature he loved – he was being forced to admit it to himself – was near, even if he didn’t see how he could ever tell her how precious those few moments were when they could be alone together, not having to perform as _mighty celestial beings,_ full of sententious dignity.

Noah had been working up a sideline in winemaking before everything went pear-shaped. The Almighty hadn’t specified it, but the cargo hold had turned out to have room for an ample supply of jugs (a miracle or two might have been involved). That was their excuse for getting together, late at night, when everyone but Noah or one of his sons was sleeping; they’d have a bit of a knees-up every week or so, there among the animals whose stalls were all miraculously clean and who miraculously didn’t even seem to _think_ about eating each other.

“Thought I’d seem less threatening like this,” she said as they passed the jug back and forth, oh so carefully not touching hands. “First time I’ve tried it this way, little strange, but you get used to it.”

“How’d you clear this Downstairs? I mean, they do know?”

“Oh, let on that giving you half a year’s crack at ’em with no one to thwart you was bad strategy. Laid the word on Bubs that savin’ their lives is kind of a prerequisite to getting ’em damned. I mean, they’re going to be doing intake processing down there for a while yet, but that _fruitful and multiply_ business’ll take time to get back up to speed…” There was a spit in her tone and a set to her mouth that usually accompanied the phrase _your lot._ He was glad she didn’t say it.

“Shem’s wife seems to be working on it.”

“Japheth’s, too. They do the – uh, fruitful and multiply thing a lot when they’re scared. Seen it before.”

“Natural to seek comfort.”

She was beautiful, just as he’d been – woman, man, serpent. The lantern light played over the long tumble of russet hair, the softer curve of the jawline. Aziraphale tried not to let his gaze linger too obviously. _They told us our mortal forms would show who we were._ He knew he was strong, but also soft and indulgent, and looked all those things. And he’d seen other demons right enough; even someone a lot drunker than he was at the moment would cross to the other side of the road. It was hard to believe this being was wholly evil, whatever his orders said.

The thought led him back around to the unicorn. “How’s Echad?” They’d named him, _one, unique_. Alone. They’d take the animals out, walk them up and down the narrow passages between the stalls, and Aziraphale’s blessings made them almost all docile and tractable, but Echad would spook and whicker if anyone but Crowley tried to take his halter.

“Sulkin’. I gave him a good curry earlier.” He’d never seen anything quite like the special bond the demon had with the unicorn, the way she took comfort from his mute trust. More than once he'd found himself lost in the sight of those hands working gently, skilfully over tangled mane, flicking tail. _I could comb that fiery hair. Put my face in it, smell the spice and sweat._ “Told ‘im we were a few days from dry land, they all want a canter.”

“Do you think?”

“Sendin’ birds out now, aren’t we? She en’t gonna be playing dice with this bunch, would She now, after all this?” The bitterness was on her lips like physic. _I could kiss that away._ He must be a terrible angel, but perhaps the Almighty had meant him to love this creature. Though he couldn’t help thinking sometimes that She Herself could have made a better job of it.

“Crowley, there must be a reason.”

“Damned if I can think what it is.”

“Well – “ The obvious comment died on his lips. The yellow eyes looked slyly back at him through the dimness. It hadn’t been a slip of the tongue.

“Let’s open another one.”

* * *

“Come here, Brother Rat.” Almost all the animals had wended their way down from the mountaintop, led by Noah and his family or carried on their backs; the strange placidity that had bound them in the Ark seemed to dissipate as they reached low ground, and they would bound or scamper or slither off in one direction and another, according to their kind. The rats had chosen to take up residence in the hold where the grain was stored early on, though another of Aziraphale’s strained budget of miracles had kept them from spoiling it. Crowley was having a time wheedling them out.

“We’re almost done here. Ham’s loaded up some panniers with the poultry.”

“I’ll have this lot out in a moment… 's’pose this is it for a while, then. Be havin’ to file all the long forms soon. Bloody Dagon’ll be pickin’ it all apart for months.”

“I’m assuming you’ve been creative.”

“Oh, I've been a whole ruddy explosion of art and language. Think they’ll really make it?”

“She promised. You saw the rainbow.”

“Never had much faith in the power of decoration.”

“Well, dear, _faith_ in things isn’t what you do.”

“Some things,” Crowley said softly as the rat crept out of hiding and into her callused, dear hand. Aziraphale listened to her chitter at the little creature, who sat up and answered.

He went out to bless the land where the mortals' new homes would rise.

* * *

There was building to do in the next few weeks. Minor catastrophes to avert, fear to quell. The angel found that a human corporation could tire, that a nod to Crowley across the controlled chaos of a shelter rising would have to stand in for their drunken palavers (they were back on a full-time performance footing now), that the mortals had to be weaned from dependence on them. The land dried, grasses raised their heads, drowned trees unfolded leaves, the sky smiled again.

He found Crowley seated under a lone olive tree, far from the encampment, her head back against the twisted trunk whose curves and recesses seemed almost made to recline against. The unicorn’s head was in her lap, the light filtered through fluttering leaves playing over its twisted horn. There was a not unpleasant equine smell, and something a little aromatic as well, like a precious gum or perfume. He couldn’t tell if it came from the unicorn or Crowley.

They hadn’t been able to speak alone for a week. Shem’s wife was needing to rest a lot now, and there had been planting to do.

The long fingers were moving in the silvery mane. To Heaven, Crowley was outcast and damned, _curst above all cattle and every beast of the field,_ but the unicorn didn't seem to know that, or care if it did. Aziraphale paused briefly, knowing his approach would startle the beast. The sight cracked his heart, which he was morally certain he had (their corporations had been made in the perfect image of mortals, down, so far as he could tell, to every niggling detail) but not sure he needed.

That might be a good thing. He was even less sure it belonged to him any more.

She was singing, and the voice was still low and rich, and he imagined her singing to him. He didn’t know demons _could_ sing. Had imagined they lost that ability in the Fall. Before he could think about it he was uttering a harmony, it was part of the Celestial skill set, you hear a praise song and your voice finds a descant without your help, and suddenly the gorgeous creature – a little larger than the onagers, smaller than the horses – had pushed itself up, whickering and snorting; shied to one side, bounded away across the turf.

Apology caught in his throat. “‘S’all right,” said Crowley, looking up, flicking a few of the rainbow-prinked mane hairs from her hands. “Needs a good gallop, he does. All of ‘em been banged up in there way too long. He doesn’t like to be that close to the rest, I come out here with him sometimes. No one else comes this way.”

“I did.”

“Glad. Sit down, comfy.”

It was. The trunk was broad enough that they could be tolerably side by side without touching.

“I told Noah She’d be asking me to leave soon. Left out the part about Her likely not wantin’ me here in the firs’ place.”

“I’m still not sure about that.”

“Careful, angel. Look at the trouble you get in for askin’ questions.”

“Well, _I’ll_ miss you.”

“See you ‘round, I’m sure. They like keeping me up here.”

“It’ll take a bit of time for us to be – _inconspicuous_ again…”

Her hand rested palm down on the turf beside her, a single strand of unicorn mane still trailing from one finger. He reached to pull it away, felt the heat of the demon’s flesh, just that much warmer than his own, as if there were always a bit of fire about her. Without thinking any more than he had before singing, he laced his fingers in between hers. After a moment the coppery head sighed down against his shoulder.

“There just wasn’t any bloody _reason_ for it…”

Demons apparently could not only sing; they could weep. Crowley was trying to pretend those weren’t muted sobs, but didn’t resist when the angel’s arms went around her. “Don’t _care_ how bloody bad they were. I should know. All the _kids,_ angel… what’d She have against the kids? Yeah, they’re,“ trying to laugh, the smile was fairly ghastly, “annoying little _prats_ but you know, you just tell ’em to bugger off ‘n stop their noise, y’don’t _drown_ ’em, an’ I can’t say it to anyone but you, Heaven’s all so bloody _right,_ Hell’s just running the numbers, you’re the only other one who lives with ’em….”

After that it became just one long present moment, like the deep ground note that sang through the universe when they all came into being, the Thrones and the Powers and Principalities, the shapeless firmament full of unrevealed glory, an endless Now.

_He can feel the damp through his robes, cooled by the breeze when she finally looks up. She’s bitten her lip a little, the most beautifully modeled corporation can’t quite elide the sharpness of those two little fanglike canines._

_Thinking takes second place yet again. He kisses the drop of blood away; iron and salt. Kisses again, in case there’s more. There’s another deep shudder against him, and it’s not a sob, and that little extra bit of fire is there too as she opens softly, the lips are cracked and dry from the arid heat but perfect. He knows a little about this, a lot of the angels had a go, that’s one of the things that got them here, but this is different. It’s not a mortal, and he’s wanted to do this ever since their eyes first met, man, woman, he’ll leave the jury out on the serpent. It goes on until there’s a flush in her cheeks and she’s reaching roughened, tentative fingers inside the sleeves of his robe, raking the hair on his arms up the wrong way, making him shiver._

_“I’m not sure we’re meant to be doing this,” he says, not stopping._

_“Don’t care.”_

_The small breasts under the abaya are barely buds, as if the newness of this corporation reflects the seasons of mortal life. Worshiping them is undoubtedly a blasphemy. He’s past giving a hallelujah. She quivers, and he can feel her moving in a slow, shallow-breathed rhythm, like the swell and trough of the waters that had been part of their lives for so long. It seems absurd to be asking a demon, but, “Is it – I mean, have you – “_

_She draws her head back, shakes it slowly._

_“Kept it for you, angel. You ….?”_

_“You might have heard that some of us – well, you saw them in Eden, we were all a bit curious, but only a time or two, it didn't seem -– “_

_“_ Stop talking _, you git.”_

_He stops talking._

_There’s a moment when the long legs are wrapped around him, the ruffled hair spread out on the discarded abaya, that he thinks this isn’t going to work, that something about a demonic body is made to resist anything of Heaven, and then she makes a sharp little choked noise and he’s buried in her. He remembers faintly that he’s chubby, and uncertain, and generally considered an inept buffoon by every other angel in the Host, but here, under this tree, sealed inside this banked heat, he simply feels like Light, like the moment when Light was created. He’s afraid of hurting her, his experience isn’t much, but she won’t let him stop, and when her voice breaks apart in a long keen muffled against his shoulder it carries him with her, into a space that’s without form and void, back into the first moment of Creation, and he understands why She split the Light into so many atoms and put it inside mortal forms, to give them the joy of coming back together._

* * *

The sun was sinking, the breeze cooling. They needed to get back to the encampment. The mortals weren’t quite ready to go it on their own yet.

The light angled through the olive tree’s leaves. They were lying on his robes, with hers over them.

“We probably ought not to have done that.”

He didn’t say it with much earnest.

“Y'said that before. Did it anyway. I was there, I remember.”

“Tempter.”

“Please. No.”

“I didn’t mean – “

“Don’t even _joke_ about it.”

“What do we do about – “

A thudding came to them through the turf. Echad, the late light flashing off his horn, had returned from wherever in a slowing canter that dropped to a walk. He shied when he saw them together; Crowley rose, gestured to the angel to stay down.

“Here, Echad. “ A sharp whistle, a few words in a language Aziraphale didn’t know – Hell had found its own tongues, and the unicorn had learned to answer to them. She stood naked in the late light, slender, even bony, but glorious, hair a fractal tumult of amber and cinnabar down her back, he couldn’t believe he’d been allowed to touch that perfection -- her hand reached for the pearled mane –

The unicorn shied again. Reared, snorted, thumped to the turf again and ran. Turned side on; came back, big equine nostrils flaring, gave an anguished neigh, turned again, galloped into the distance.

Aziraphale rose, holding the demon’s long black robe. She turned, face stricken; now that he was standing he could see the little dabble of blood inside her thigh, where a short time ago he’d been finding Light, and redemption. _Every niggling detail._

She shrugged into the _abaya,_ gazed back at him with so many warring feelings in her eyes that speech failed him: longing, reproach, shock, grief.

Love.

He wasn’t sure which won out, or if any of them did, but when he took a step toward her she turned her back, and walked away deliberately, slowly, flinging the hood up over her hair almost as an afterthought.

He didn’t see Crowley again for a long time.

_finis_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And from that day to this, no one's ever actually seen a unicorn. We all know how the whole thing works with virgins and unicorns, right?
> 
> The whole time I was writing this I kept reverting to Augusta Gregory's poem Donal Og, which catches some of the spirit if not the exact shape of the narrative, so that gave me the title:
> 
> It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;  
> the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.  
> It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;  
> and that you may be without a mate until you find me.
> 
> You promised me, and you said a lie to me,  
> that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;  
> I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,  
> and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.
> 
> You promised me a thing that was hard for you,  
> a ship of gold under a silver mast;  
> twelve towns with a market in all of them,  
> and a fine white court by the side of the sea.
> 
> You promised me a thing that is not possible,  
> that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;  
> that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;  
> and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.
> 
> When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,  
> I sit down and I go through my trouble;  
> when I see the world and do not see my boy,  
> he that has an amber shade in his hair.
> 
> It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;  
> the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday  
> and myself on my knees reading the Passion;  
> and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.
> 
> My mother has said to me not to be talking with you today,  
> or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;  
> it was a bad time she took for telling me that;  
> it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.
> 
> My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,  
> or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;  
> or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;  
> it was you put that darkness over my life.
> 
> You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west from me;  
> you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;  
> you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;  
> and my fear is great that you have taken God from me.


	2. More Than Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inevitably, they drift back into each other's orbit. They still can't agree about Her.
> 
> _“I had my directive. To witness. It’s not for us to know all Her reasons.”_
> 
> _“And I had mine. S’posed to prognosticate for Downstairs how bad a hitch this is gonna put in our operations. All I saw was a bloke I got trolleyed with once, bein’ nailed up like a proclamation. Fuck. Let’s open the other one.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Rating T.
> 
> I ask the Thing In My Head for more fluff, but what do I get? This. Well, exactly one reader thought that it was cruel to leave things where they stood at the end of what is now Chapter 1. I had to agree, and consider more. I'm not sure this is helping.
> 
> It's starting to shape up as something like five times Crowley left and one when he didn't. Or in that ballpark..
> 
> Send warm fuzzies to @CopperPlateBeech on Tumblr.

_“More than kisses, letters mingle souls; For, thus friends absent speak.” – John Donne_

She was wearing something around her neck on a leather cord, but he couldn’t quite see what it was and didn’t want to stare. The wealthy Jewish women had taken to wearing jewelry, and the cloth of the _abaya_ looked costly enough – black dye was dear – that he’d have expected silver or enamelwork.

“They’ll want my report, but not tonight,” she said as they picked their way through the increasingly narrow and dusty streets, each carrying a jug. “Put paid to these anyhow. Catch up. Been too long.”

It’d been centuries. He had kept count to the day. Better not mention that.

“I suppose our Head Offices can’t say anything if we’re in the same place at the same time. This time."

“Could’ve done without it.”

They got a few curious looks – Aziraphale’s cover at the moment wasn’t grand or affluent, he’d been directed to mingle with the poor people and hear the stories they were telling about the young preacher, even encourage them. An expensively clothed woman, partially veiled, looked out of place with him and in these parts; it invited speculation about her profession. A neighbor who knew the angel slightly caught his eye as they passed, lifted an eyebrow. _Looks pricey for you, mate._

“I’ll tell people you were his follower, moved to come to a poor quarter and perform acts of charity.”

Crowley snorted.

“Why this – ah – corporation?” the angel said as he turned the latch. “Men can move about so much more easily here. Or a Roman woman.”

“People are gettin’ touchy about the eyes. Veil helps.” She collapsed into a chair almost without looking. The heat out there had been pretty merciless, the events draining. Even the Roman soldiers had looked like they wanted to be anywhere else.

“I don’t think you’ve been like this since – “ He didn’t say _The Flood._ “I always seem to show up someplace just after you’ve left, but no one ever mentions a woman. It’s always a snake god or a wandering Magus or something. Here, get outside of this.”

They were out of ways not to talk about it, but silence seemed like the only possible answer to the enormity of what they’d just seen. Outside, the quarter was shutting down for the Sabbath, making the stillness larger.

“So it’s true, everything I heard about you tempting him?” said Aziraphale finally, at the second pour. “I got a memo, but I can’t think what I was meant to do about it. Tell him not to talk to strangers? It was all he ever did.”

“Embellished the report a little.”

“Oh?”

“Well, it was the assignment, gotta file the paperwork. Try to suss out if he could really do miracles, offer ‘im a bribe…”

“All the kingdoms of the world. Ambitious.”

“Go big or go home.” Crowley emptied the cup in a way that no well-to-do Jewish woman would be likely to do, except at Purim. “The stones into bread thing was just a spur of the moment idea. Hadn’t had lunch. And I was ready to catch him if he’d gone for that jumpin’ off the Temple bit, I’d’ve just blamed you… But the kingdoms, y’know, that was mostly sort’ve sight-seein’ in the end.” The demon’s tone grew a little distant. “Might not’ve ended up where he did if he’d actually fallen down and worshiped me, but, y’know. Pitched it so high I knew he wouldn’t. Well, came close to the fallin’ down part.”

“You’re losing me...”

“Long hike up that mountain. He had a skin full of water, I did a little miracle and swapped it out for some of that good stuff from the Negev. View was nice, we just sat up there and passed it back and forth for a while, had a good chin-wag… He kept askin' me to show him the trick.”

“I suppose none of that went in your report.”

“Just the part where he told me to bugger off. I mean, he didn’t really _want_ me to bugger off, it was that I’d just told him about the time Hastur got summoned bollocky-naked by someone who was hoping for Lilith… He was laughing so hard he got hiccups, he’d been fasting y’know, that Negev stuff goes to your head.”

“So does this.”

“Long day.”

“I don’t suppose the wine counted as tempting him.”

“No strings.” Crowley poured again for both of them. “Comin’ down was a little dicey, it was steep... I _did_ teach him one incantation at that point, dunno if he remembered… the one for gettin’ possessing spirits to go somewhere else. Thought he might get some use out of it. They’ve been goin’ in for that a lot lately Downstairs.”

“It seems a singularly dangerous pastime. Remind me never to try it.”

“Ah, _you_ wouldn’t now, would you…? All sweetness and light? _Good_ angel…” She crooned it the way you’d say it to a horse or dog.

The wine was bringing it out in Crowley again. The bitterness, the, well, the lack of faith. Not that that didn’t obviously come with the package.

“I wish I could make you see. There is a Plan, Crowley, and it’s all going as it should.”

“And today was part of it? That’s why I saw you three–four times tryin' not to be sick?”

“I had my directive. To witness. It’s not for us to know all Her reasons.”

“And I had mine. S’posed to _prognosticate_ for Downstairs how bad a hitch this is gonna put in our operations. All I saw was a bloke I got trolleyed with once, bein’ nailed up like a proclamation. Fuck. Let’s open the other one.”

"They're saying that his closest friend denied him three times."

"'s'what people do when the heat comes on, ennit?... Come on, here we go, le's drink to him..."

She spilled a little, muttered another swear, knocked over the chair trying to sit back down in it, swore a third time, flung herself backward onto the bed. Everything in the room was close to everything else.

“See, questioned everything, liked that about him…” The veil had fallen entirely back from the ramble of red hair, he’d seen it spread over black robes before, _just stay in this chair, they’re going to be keeping a close eye right now._

“I don’t think you should stay much longer – “

“Bugger. Last three years been worse than the last three hundred. Earned some personal leave. Don’tcha ever wanna just chuck it up, try it the way they do it? Raise a garden, sit out on a hillside with the sheep, weave baskets?”

“We’ve got our places, Crowley. Inna… In the Plan. She needs me. Needs you maybe. All playing out. Like it’s…” No good. All he could think of was biting the back of his hand, to keep from losing the lunch he hadn’t eaten, when the centurion drove up the spear. “Gotta have faith She knows what She’s doing.”

“S’pose that’s why you never met a rule you wouldn’t bend?”

“It’s different, Crowley. Sometimes decisions have to be made in the field.”

“C’mere.”

He wasn’t sure how he ended up on the bed. They slotted against one another, the demon’s head a dead weight on his shoulder. The last of the jug got passed from hand to hand, clumsily, splashes soaking aromatically into the pillows.

He wondered what to do. What he dared do.

Presently he realized she was snoring.

She’d have a big head in the morning. Be awkward getting her out by daylight. His drunken brain kept slipping off the problem. Could Crowley transform, as hung over as she was going to be? God, they were idiots. Snake maybe. Carry her out in a basket. Wouldn’t do to be taken for an adulterous woman. Leaving a man’s room. No one around now to tell people to put the stones down. To tell her, _go and sin no more._

“ ‘cept me,” he found himself mumbling into the vivid hair, stroking it, pulling her unconscious weight closer. “Give ’em the Full Angel Of The Lord thing. _Be Not Afraid._ _Ah, Gabriel, just wanted to show She stood behind him, y’know. Approved his message. Also, sit on this_.” The last swallow went down backwards, he coughed resoundingly, Crowley stirred but didn’t rouse.

He pulled up the rough blanket. Those silly people who thought the earth was flat. He could feel it turning.

* * *

Every time he forgot to sober up he swore he never would again. Someone was forcing a waggon over the uneven cobbles outside, Sabbath or no Sabbath, and his head was pounding in time to it. It kept him from remembering something important.

Oh. _Crowley._ She’d been there when he passed out.

He was alone, the room was as it’d been for months, except for a leather cord on the pillow next to him. The little charm hung on it was hammered silver – just as he would have expected – but unadorned, forming the forked shape of a small G _imel,_ the third letter. First there was One, _Aleph,_ then Two, _Beith_. In the third letter the opposites are reconciled.

He was lifting the cord to settle over his head when he saw a bit of parchment under the door, addressed in Gabriel’s unmistakable hand.

No rest for the weary. His head felt as if it might swoop off when he bent to pick it up. Gabriel wanted a message delivered: _Be Not Afraid._

It looked as if he had an appearance to make at a sepulcher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cop to having used "Aziraphale was the angel at the tomb" previously, but, well, it makes sense? He was in the area.
> 
> Not intending to slavishly follow the sequence of the Hard Times cold open, but the Wessex chapter is already taking shape. Honestly, I have to write something funny and sweet soon. Maybe it's the times. Everything seems a bit grim. Hug your household members and pets (social distance from everyone else).
> 
> We haven't heard the last about the unicorn.


	3. A Little Touch Of Crowley In The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're trying to find their way back. Crowley still doesn't think much of Her. Aziraphale's wavering. And it's fucking cold out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Rating T.
> 
> The Wessex sequence of the cold open is timelined at 537 AD, not a random choice; it's the first mentioned date in any chronicle for the battle of Camlann where King Arthur took his mortal wound. 
> 
> 536 was a year of climate upheaval, possibly a volcanic event that produced a brief "nuclear winter" scenario, causing plunging temperatures and crop failures across Northern Europe. It's the kind of thing that sets people against one another and undermines even well loved regimes.
> 
> Malory's account is in Book 21, Chapter 4 of the _Morte d'Arthur._

Paper was still costly, but of course, it was always miraculously available when you needed it. They had just always taken care to mimic the available resources when composing departmental correspondence. He’d been glad when the whole clay tablet thing was behind them.

_Today I unexpectedly encountered my longtime adversary, the demon Crowley, for the first time in some while, and foiled a direct attempt to divert me from my work. He’s become quite bold, and I will need to consider my options. I am confident this can be brought under control._

_The unrest among the nearby clans is barely manageable…_

A shadow passed between the tent mouth and the campfire outside. Sometimes his equerry liked to bring him spiced wine when he saw the faint glow of the candle inside his tent, knowing that he was up late writing dispatches; the boy was young, far from home and probably lonely. He always made it a point to speak with him a while, offer to share the cup (it was always declined, possibly because the spices were the only thing that made it barely palatable, but it was what they had in the field).

He didn’t expect the flare of red in the candlelight as the tent flap dropped shut. Arthur’s host sported various shades of red-gold heads, you could pick Gawain out from half a mile away, but Mabon was a dark Welshman from Dyfedd. He tried to compose his face, he was pretty sure unsuccessfully

“How _ever_ did you get past the watch?” he asked, _sotto voce._ “I put extra men out at the perimeter. There was news of more raiding parties when I got back here.”

“Well, I can be subtle, y’know. Snake in the grass, and all that.”

Aziraphale put the pen down. “Crowley, I am not hearing another word about it. You’ve taken a risk for nothing. You can go out the same way you came in.”

“Oh. What about _Crowley, it’s been ages, too long since we had a drink together?”_

“You don’t want any of this stuff, trust me.” Mabon’s stock of herbs and honey was running low.

“Good thing I brought this, then.”

Aziraphale pushed the chair back with a sigh. It was a better reason to relent than the real one. There were a few claw beakers in his chest, Saxon glass from a brief time when relations had been friendlier

Crowley lowered himself to the edge of the tumble of silks and furs that stood in for a bed; an extra seat was a superfluous luxury. “Do nice for y’rself,” he said. “Cheers.”

“What’s this Black Knight business anyway? Bit theatrical.”

“They like it Downstairs. Gives the resistance to Arthur a rallying point hereabouts. Lurk in my remote marsh, become a bit of a legend. Good way to look like I’m doing something without a lot of trouble.”

“Where are you finding wine like this?”

“Well, if we could get on a less adversarial footing, might tell you.” That infectious grin flashed in the candlelight.

“I _am_ bound to resist any sabotage, you know. Arthur is trying to unite this island. It seems to be very important to the Head Office. I’m having to file a creative report right now to explain why I didn’t take a more, ah, aggressive stance with you earlier today.”

“ ‘Cos’ you like me?” The tone was bantering but the look in the yellow eyes wasn't so glib.

“I’ve missed you,” he admitted. _I’ve thought about you sleeping drunk in my arms. The way you looked at me through those queer smoked lenses at Petronius’ table. How you stared after me when I had to leave._ (Drat Gabriel and his dispatches.) “But I’m not doing this… this _collusion_ thing.”

“Oh, we’re calling it that now, are we? So the Ark, that was just an exchange of courtesies.”

“It was a… foolhardy risk.”

“All of it?”

_(I was there, I remember.)_

“Look, management’s on me to see Arthur comes a cropper. You’re out here tellin’ the world he’s the man’ve the hour. But you know, the bards’re already doin’ that, this Myrddin fellow with the magical voice -- heard he was one of ours, but go figure - they say time stands still when he sings… ‘n’ on the other side, well, everyone’s hungry, crops failed last year, they're fightin' just over bread. Hungry people are angry. I take the credit Downstairs but it’s mostly the weather. That’s on Her, ennit?”

“I’ve told you before, Crowley, we have to have faith that She knows what She’s doing.”

“Got that struck from my job description long time ago.”

“And I also have to have faith that you’ll come round. Look at how you were drawn here…”

The yellow eyes found something fascinating in a fold of the tent off to Crowley’s right. ”Nothin’ to do with Her, ‘n’ you know it.” Almost inaudible. He could choose to ignore it.

“You hate suffering. We could have prosperity in Britain, a Roman-style peace – it’s a culture that builds things …”

“Yeah, remember how good they are with a hammer ‘n’ nails... on that subject, wanted to tell you.”

“Ah, now we come to it.”

“Been hearin’ rumors. Management workin’ up a counterfoil to, y’know, _him._ That it’s meant to set off a final war between your lot and mine. We could end up fightin’ each other for real, not in this tin clobber pretending to be mortal.”

“I can't believe She'd allow a thing like that.”

“Happened before, didn’t it?”

“Yes, and that settled the matter. Your lot are where they are, trying to undermine ours, and we always thwart you.”

“Yeah, maybe all along I just wanted you to give me a good thwartin’.”

“Crowley. _You_ walked away…”

“You didn’t come lookin’.”

“Was I supposed to?”

The answer was apparently in the bottom of Crowley’s vase-shaped cup. “Well, it’s all gummed up in R & D right now anyway, so let’s just pour some more of this. Forget I said anything.”

“Don’t get tetchy. You’re just cold. And tired. I see it with the men. Let me show you something my equerry taught me.”

“Long as it’s not his recipe.”

 _This is a very bad idea,_ said something in the back of the angel’s head as he dropped to his knees on the furs behind Crowley. But then, he’d heard the same voice just before he gave away the sword, and that hadn’t turned out so badly, had it?

“Carrying that ring mail around all day, I know how it makes your shoulders ache…”

“Sssss. Equerry might know somethin’ after all.”

“Just lean back, what did I say, you’re tight as a bowstring…”

“Right _there._ Just wavin’ that sword around for effect, gives you a stitch…”

“You’re shivering.”

“Got pretty drenched comin’ over here. Not a dry spot in this whole sodding island. Miss Judaea, hell, miss _Italy._ ”

“Get this around you.”

“Smells like a wet dog…”

“Thanks very much, I’m sure.”

“Not _you,_ angel. I know how you smell… Can’t remember the last time I was warm.”

“Come in here then.”

The candle guttered.

* * *

_They say time stands still when he sings._ The angel had heard Myrddin, whose songs were also prophecies (he was becoming interested in the subject of prophecy); even they didn’t halt the turning Earth like this silent little bubble of darkness, nothing more yet than shared warmth inside the silks and furs. He’d found Mabon and the cook’s boy huddled the same way, in all their layers of wool, fighting the damp chill.

They could pretend it never happened. That was how they did it.

“D’you know they're still tellin' stories about the unicorn? Some bollocks about how he’s Yeshua, virgin’s Maryam. Dunno how anyone got that out of it.”

“Because I told them, dear. Back in Alexandria. Everyone thought he was a lovely metaphor for God’s Messenger. Not counting the Gnostic heretics who thought _you_ were.”

Snort. “Gotta put the Heaven slant on everything.”

“I thought you’d want him remembered kindly. Making it into a Christian allegory was the surest way. I confess to enjoying my little joke.”

A little distant commotion and unintelligible talk; the watch changing out. Time starting to trickle back in. Was that the slow dawn approaching? No, just a lantern in the distance.

“Angel. We had somethin’, didn’t we?"

He found he could lie to Her, but not to Crowley. Not answering was better. “I took something from you. And I was afraid you hated me for it.”

“Think we’ve established I don’t?”

A little more conversation at the edge of hearing. He’d have to read them out again about being careless. Some of the Saxon scouts could hear grass growing.

“You’ll need to go soon.” _Because if you don’t, I’ll kiss you, and Heaven and Hell won’t be looking the other way forever._ “I can show you the safest way…”

“Figured that out myself.”

Voices coming closer.

“Listen… what you said earlier.”

“'Bout what?””

“Having some sort of arrangement… I suppose it makes sense. Certainly easier to explain than…”

“Keepin’ me from the foggy dew?”

His breath still smelled like spices. This was no time to taste them.

“What else have you got coming up? I’m meant to keep an eye out for an island in a lake…”

“Nothin’ else you could help with just now. S’posed to show up at someplace called Camlann in a few weeks.”

“I know where that is.”

“Yeah but, gotta be snake, see. Highly specific. Bite a knight on the heel and run like fuck. Dunno why, but pissin’ people off, always gins up the sin ratio…”

Mabon's groggy voice at the tent flap. “Sire? There are reports of harrying in the night. There’s a scout to speak to you – ”

“ ’ll try to calm things down.” Crowley’s voice was barely a breath, the brush of lips barely a kiss.

“Attend me presently,” called Aziraphale to the boy. When he turned the demon was gone.

If Mabon noticed the two cups by the heap of silks and furs, he said nothing.

_Right soon came an adder out of a little heath bush, and it stung a knight on the foot. And when the knight felt him stungen, he looked down and saw the adder, and then he drew his sword to slay the adder, and thought of none other harm. And when the host on both parties saw that sword drawn, then they blew beams, trumpets and horns, and shouted grimly. And so both hosts dressed them together._ _And King Arthur took his horse, and said, “Alas this unhappy day!”_

–Sir Thomas Malory, _Le Morte d’Arthur_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merlin (Myrddin in Welsh) seems to be based on a real poet or bard, though the timelines don't quite match. Geoffrey of Monmouth floated the story of his prophetic abilities, and it's tradition that he was the Devil's son or at least a demon's. T. H. White suggested he knew the future because he experienced time differently. I figured mashing up bits of all these versions couldn't hurt.
> 
> The unicorn as Christian allegory dates roughly to second or third-century Alexandria, also a hotbed of Gnostic belief, which famously considered the Serpent of Eden a savior for conferring the knowledge of good and evil.
> 
> This social distance thing is making me dig out way too many of my college texts.


	4. Grant Me A Good Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paths cross again in Southern France.
> 
>  _“I was in the area, trouble started ginning up, figured I’d just hang around and take the credit Downstairs, and Bubs is all_ good work, Crowley, carry on. _Next thing I know, I’m up on a mountain dodgin’ rocks. Those French don’t fuck around."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically this fic has become the Head Dump for all of Copper's historical hobbyhorses -- a terrible consequence of being under virtual house arrest with a medievally-skewed library. This doesn't advance their story far, though they've clearly gotten easier with one another and Aziraphale's still trying to get closer without quite owning it.
> 
> I've been wanting to vignette them in the Albigensian crusade since mentioning it a few fics ago, so there, dealt with it. Normal fic writing will resume soon.
> 
> Chapter rating, again, T.

_Montsegur, 1244_

“You were there through all of it?”

“Most of it.”

“Hardly where I’d expect to find you.”

The pyre had smouldered for days, long after the French troops, almost as exhausted as the defenders, pulled back. Broken pieces of ordnance were still scattered on the trampled ground, beaten bare after nine months of encampment; heaps of stones flanked the wreckage of a few mangonelle catapults, like a scattering of cairns. It was hard to imagine how they could have reached the parapets atop the sheer cliff, but humans had proven ingenious in contriving ways to destroy one another.

Now the irregular heaps of rock were merely a good place to sit, watching as locals picked through the remains of the camp for anything that could be salvaged.

“I was in the area, trouble started ginning up, figured I’d just hang around and take the credit Downstairs, and Bubs is all _good work, Crowley, carry on_. Next thing I know, I’m up on a mountain dodgin’ rocks. Those French don’t fuck around.” Crowley accepted the offer of some substandard wine from under the angel’s cloak, grimaced, smacked the back of his hand against his mouth. “Didn’t expect this place to fall though. But when the Basques got up that escarpment, pretty clear at that point we were fucked.”

“ _We_?”

“Kinda got used to ’em… no sacraments, no Holy Water, no consecrated anything. Y’know how these days you can’t turn a corner without bumping into a priest or a monk or someone floggin’ holy relics, it’s like workin’ in a hot kitchen.”

“I confess I’m not quite up to speed. There are so many heresies.”

“Well, it was all kinda philosophical for me, but at least no one seemed to mind my eyes. They didn’t believe in Hell, y'know. I wasn’t going to break it to them.”

“I suppose I need to brush up. I’ve been in the Levant for so long. Softening the heart of Saladin, that kind of thing.”

“So you weren’t around back when the whole thing kicked off? Bunch of ’em got trapped in a church, abbot said to kill them all and She’d know Her own. Been meaning to check with the Intake boys Downstairs and see how that shook out.”

“Just for not believing in Hell?”

“Oh, and not keeping the Pope up in style, and having land that someone else wanted…”

“Cynical, Crowley.”

“Realistic, angel.”

“Well dear, we must have faith in Her Plan. I’m sure she considered them all Her own.”

“And I’m sure that was a great consolation to ‘em. More of that plonk?”

A woman with a basket full of flotsam – as they watched she’d dropped in an iron buckle, some scrap of leather, what was probably a bent knife – glanced at them as he spoke, turned away again. The nearby villagers all looked like ghosts walking in daylight; they’d been spared the worst the besiegers could do, a lot of them lived in caves that you’d think only a goat could scramble to, but they’d had to witness.

“I kept tellin’ ‘em to just cross themselves and give it up for the Pope. I mean, you could see the French down here pilin’ up wood? But nah, dyin’ a martyr’s all the rage, seems. All askin' Her to give ' em a good death, lookin' down at _that._ " He passed the bottle back. "They got the garrison to carry down the ones who couldn’t walk. Count’s daughter never could go more'n twenty paces, bad hip no matter how many of ’em laid hands on her." After a pause, more softly: "Didn’t weigh much.”

Aziraphale tried to read his expression and couldn’t. He was staring into the middle distance.

“Back in town they’re telling a story that she escaped on wings. I suppose there’ll be a lot of that. Some of the locals seem remarkably superstitious.”

“Ah. Well, by that time ‘bout all I could do was fuck with Innocent’s goons a little, so I thought, why not? Fell into fire once already, got the hang of it, y’know? Waited until it was going good, got as close as I could and blew the wings. All that smoke, you couldn’t tell if they were black or white.”

“And you didn’t just leave then?”

“Had to file the report and check my assignments. They want me in Toulouse next, probably some good opportunities in the mop-up. You?”

“Gabriel seemed to be concerned about some of their manuscripts. Apparently I’ve gotten a reputation for locating rare documents. I’m meant to make sure they never see the light of day.”

“Manage it?”

“After a manner of speaking. By which I mean, don’t look too closely in my saddlebags.”

The angel’s gaze projected guileless innocence.

“I hate to let a written record be lost,” he said primly.

The woman with the basket circled back towards them. Crowley didn’t know her face, but she seemed to know his.

“You,” she said softly. “I saw you at the end. You came down with the _bonshommes.”_

“Just got here actually – “

“They made us witness after we forswore. I saw you. They’re saying it was the Comtesse who escaped, but it was you. And now you come to watch over us, with those eyes like the Serpent’s that brought wisdom to the world... I am weak, and feared the flames. Forgive me, and bless me now.”

She sank to her knees in front of the increasingly flustered demon, setting down the basket, and bowed her head. “Grant that God may make me a good Christian, and bring me to a good death.”

Crowley looked slightly frantically at the angel, who gestured silently towards the kneeling woman – _all yours, my dear –_ with a faint smile playing on his lips.

“Oh, Bubs’ll _love_ this,” mouthed the demon, and laid his hands on her head.

* * *

“Been a shame to disappoint her. Doin’ blessings for you, kinda got the knack. Keeps things simmering if they think there’s still a resistance, dunnit?”

“Wasn’t that the Gospel of John you were quoting?”

“What I could remember. Heard it in there so many times. Wanted to make it look good.”

“So even a demon can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

“Sounds like somethin’ one of your poets would say.”

“It isn’t, but maybe it will be.”

They were coming into heavier foot traffic now, and Crowley’s hood was over his face. “Prob’ly need to get out’ve the area before she starts talking,” he said.

“I’ve got a horse back in the town, if you can ride pillion."

“Bloody horses. Bruise your arse black and blue.”

“Well, dear, it's because you're too thin. I always tell you, you should eat more.”

“Then he couldn’t carry us both.”

Aziraphale said nothing, thinking about Crowley’s arms wrapped round him from behind, all the way to Toulouse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t claim to be an expert on the Cathars, but I had a mild preoccupation with them at one time. The heresy thrived in the Languedoc in the 12th and 13th centuries. The French king wanted the land, the Pope wanted believers, fire and sword ensued, as happens; it was the actual launch of the Inquisition, for which (as we remember) Crowley took the credit. 
> 
> The anecdote about a prince of the Church essentially saying “Kill them all and let God sort them out” ( _Caedite eos, novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius_ ) appears in several accounts.
> 
> The Cathar resistance broke in March of 1244 when a siege force of primarily French troops finally took the hilltop fortress of Montsegur. Two hundred who refused to recant their heresy were burned on a common pyre; reputedly, their writings and treasures were hidden and never found. Imaginative tales grew up over time, such as that of the Countess Esclarmonde de Foix escaping on wings, which was apparently being told in the region well into the 20th century (that Esclarmonde had been dead for decades, but the seigneur's daughter Esclarmonde, a disabled teenager -- probably with a tubercular hip -- was the youngest of the martyrs). Another story has the literal Holy Grail hidden along with the manuscripts. Cathar revivalism has become enough of a bee in occultist bonnets that I wouldn’t be surprised to find articles about it in the _New Aquarian._


	5. Nothing Like The Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation with a rising playwright in the theater people's dive, circa 1592.
> 
> _“He won’t even let me treat him to luncheon,” demurred Aziraphale. “I really thought when we fetched up in Toulouse that time that you’d stay and try some of the pistou. It’s divine.”_
> 
> _“”You could think of food in the middle of a bombardment.”_
> 
> _“There, I rest my case. You’re as sharp-tongued with each other as fishwives, and yet here you are together. I could model characters on you, and everyone would know who’d be married at the end of the play.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We don't know when they became acquainted with Shakespeare, but the association with Aziraphale at least was clearly comfortable by the time Hamlet came along.

“All writers,” said Will, sidling back to the heavy, scarred table with a fistful of pewter mugs, “have to learn to read people as well as we read books. The work is barren otherwise. I have been accused of sorcery.”

“Same,” said Crowley, tipping up a mug. The Mermaid’s wine was average, but at least the pours were ample.

“For example. Much as you say you aren't friends, you two” – he glanced from Crowley to Aziraphale, who was fussing, trying to keep the wine out of his ruff – “were lovers at one time. And I wager will be again.”

“Not if I get there first,” said Kit Marlowe, who’d passed behind Crowley just as Will spoke. He leaned over the demon’s shoulder just a little more closely, and a little longer, than necessary to steal a pull from his mug, before he moved on, apparently slotting Crowley into the queue somewhere after the young man who’d played Zenobia.

“He won’t even let me treat him to luncheon,” demurred Aziraphale. “I really thought when we fetched up in Toulouse that time that you’d stay and try some of the _pistou._ It’s divine.”

“”You could think of food in the middle of a bombardment.”

“There, I rest my case. You’re as sharp-tongued with each other as fishwives, and yet here you are drinking together. I could model characters on you, and everyone would know who’d be married at the end of the play.” The playwright pointed at them, forefingers akimbo. “There. Looking anywhere but at each other. I know all the tells.”

“All right then, ‘ll play your game,” said Crowley. “If we were, why aren’t we now?”

“It cost you something. He’s still trying to make it up. Luncheon won’t do, Master Fell, much as you love it.”

“Really, this is –”

“It seems to me that you protest too much.”

Aziraphale began to look nettled; carefully rebuilt his smile. “All right, then. If we’re to play this game. What’s it to be?”

“You could present him with a sonnet.” Will lifted his tankard and his eyebrows. “I take commissions.”

“Hmph. His eyes are nothing like the sun.”

“We never see them, so how do _you_ know? You ought to stop talking now, Master Fell.”

“Good luck with that,” said Crowley, now openly grinning.

“And now he _is_ looking at you. But only when you’re not looking back. You do the same. There's something more that’s made it difficult, I think -- rival families? That’s a classic – why, Master Fell, thou’r’t ruddy as a morning promising storm – what do you suppose that means?”

“I think that means it’s my splash,” said Aziraphale with a nervous smile. “Same?”

The tavern was loud enough now that Will had to lean closer to speak.

“Master Crowley. Master Fell is my particular friend. I always cherish his advice. Let me give some to you. Do not fear to love him.”

“Why? ‘Cos’ love conquers all?”

The smoked lenses were unsettling. Storytellers are used to chimaeras and prodigies; Will’s gaze didn’t flicker.

“Because it gives poets something to write about. No, in earnest, Master Crowley, there is a smile I see on his face in one circumstance and one only, and that is when you enter a room. Listen to a poet, we know.”

A chair crashed to the floor off to Will’s left. Marlowe picked himself up from the sticky boards, far enough to seize the hand of the stripling drinking across from him, who looked significantly the worse for wear.

 _A woman's face with nature's own hand painted  
_ _Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion,_

he declaimed before tumbling forward face first again, then clambering up with the aid of the table, laughing.

“I’m going to use that,” said Will. “He won’t remember when he’s sober.”

“Use what?” asked Aziraphale, looking over his shoulder at the disheveled Marlowe as he set down the fresh tankards.

Nobody saw where Crowley went.


	6. Persephone In The Underworld

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As has been pointed out, anyone with eyes notices something.
> 
> _“They’ve been going over some of my old reports. No one’s exactly said_ falsified _or_ exaggerated _, mostly things like_ remarkable _and_ impressive _and_ curious that I could be in so many places at once _… flattery from your superiors in Hell isn’t good news, in case you were wondering. Sometimes it means you're going to be down there for a while.”_  
>    
> _He tossed some fragments of stale biscuit to a few of the ubiquitous ducks._
> 
> _“It’ll blow over. Like that craze of Gabriel’s for blue-black ink. I find sepia so much easier on the eyes.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the times: this series of historical takes is on the angsty side, but this is as harsh as it's going to get. Occasioned by some Tumblr-found commentary on how grimly Hell was actually portrayed in the first short-story-length treatment: it was very clear that demons did actually have to fear Inquisition-style torments, because they could always put themselves back together. So that Holy Water request wasn't, as we know, hysterical. He could have spent all that time napping. Or.

Something had changed in the demon since Paris. It had almost been easy between them then; he’d broken down and shared the meal, if it was _sharing_ to push the food around on his plate and watch, still protective and alert, through those inscrutable lenses as the angel tucked in with the appetite that comes roaring back after a narrow escape.

“You _won’t_ get into trouble over this, will you? You said you got a commendation on that last job I did – “

“And the Dukes’ve had their knives out for me ever since. Envy, y’know, one of the Seven Deadlies.”

“But they haven’t any inkling about – “ He popped another bite of the crepes into his mouth, realizing he’d almost said _about us._ Licking a drop of raspberry sauce from the fork: “The Arrangement.”

“Nah. I said they were envious, I didn’t say they were bright.”

“In that case, is there anything I can handle for you? What brought you to the area anyhow?”

“Ah, just goin’ back and forth in the Earth, and walking up and down in it.” It sounded a good deal like _looking after you_. “You going to be safe getting home?”

“I’ll manage a few blessings along the way. Gabriel might be a bit cross about my _anticipating strategy_ in unsettled times, but it won’t seem odd. Walk with me a bit…”

But the demon slipped away while Aziraphale settled the bill, and the next time he caught sight of Crowley – at the end of the street, as he stepped out to admire the newly painted façade of the shop that celebrated his permanent posting to London – his broad smile of greeting froze at a slow shake of the head, an expressionless gaze. _No, there’s nothing on I need help with. Just passing._

Maybe _No, it’s too dangerous._

But you couldn’t lose someone for long in London, so perhaps it was entirely chance when they met again, in the hubbub of a West End theatre before the curtain. Crowley looked away as he returned the angel’s greeting, and said to the railing in front of him, “ _Attracted some attention. Not here_.” A little more loudly, “I believe Madame Vestris will indeed debut as Proserpina tonight. I had heard there was some doubt.”

“Quite the challenging part for such a young singer. Ravished off to Hell in the first act, I believe? _Are you being watched?"_

“Not to be missed. They say the composer lit his torch from Mozart’s. _Can’t be sure. Rendezvous later."_

“A departure, writing the lead part for a contralto. _Where_?" They’d never done things this way; merely discovered, now and again, that they were canceling each other out, found a way to manage it, made it a reason to linger in each other’s orbit.

“They say her voice combines the richness of a man’s with the delicacy of a woman’s. _St. James’s Park, by the pond. The fashionable people go there to be seen."_ The demon’s smart frock coat and stock collar, quite in the forefront of style, put him squarely in that category.

“I am all anticipation. _Two tomorrow, then._ Ah, here’s the maestro.”

* * *

“They’ve been going over some of my old reports. No one’s exactly said _falsified_ or _exaggerated,_ mostly things like _remarkable_ and _impressive_ and _curious_ that I could be in so many places at once… flattery from your superiors in Hell isn’t good news, in case you were wondering. Sometimes it means you're going to be down there for a while.”

He tossed some fragments of stale biscuit to a few of the ubiquitous ducks.

“It’ll blow over. Like that craze of Gabriel’s for blue-black ink. I find sepia so much easier on the eyes.”

“I don’t think Bubs goes off the scent that easily. They’ll have their eye on me.”

“Should we… stop?” The idea feels like death. There’s always been that next meeting to look forward to, however remote. Crowley’s presence is the scent of fruit trees in the Garden, the newness of the breeze as the rains came, the abstract innocence of that first conversation ( _“Funny if we both got it wrong, eh? if I did the good thing and you did the bad one?”),_ from before the time when they’d seen what Her creations could do to one another. There’s always been the promise. _Kept it for you, angel._ Spoken in a voice with the richness of a man's, the delicacy of a woman's. Maybe by now he’s only imagining.

“Wouldn’t do to change the way we do things too much. That’ll set off alarms. Just go canny.”

“I’d rather hoped to have you visit the shop soon… it’s open to the public, hardly odd for an occult being to visit a place with so many occult books, quite a lovely collection really…”

“In good time. There’s always a good time, isn’t there? Eventually?” Demons and angels don’t age, as such, but their corporations reflect who they are, and centuries of bitterness and vigilance had crept into the set of Crowley’s lips, the rigor of his stance. He gripped the head of his stylish walking stick entirely too tightly. “Meet here for now. There’ll be something to swap off. Now and then. Something that’ll make my reports all look like business as usual, convince ‘em they overreacted. Sundays about this time, when they all get out of church?”

“And come here to be fashionable and seen? I’ll be here. Punctually.”

“You don’t need to always come.”

The angel gazed off across the pond, as if admiring a passing coach, or the grace of a woman in a riding dress. _Stop time for us, the way you did in Paris. I’ll find my courage. I’ll kiss you. I’ll say it._

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

* * *

And now he’s sitting here at his desk in the back of the shop, a leather cord lying across his palm, kept supple by a low grade miracle, _preserves a relic which came into my hand on the day of the Crucifixion,_ Gabriel couldn’t find anything to criticize about that.

He’s played the scene over in his head dozens, hundreds of times. He doesn’t know what came over him.

Hell hadn’t let up. _Something doesn’t add up, Crowley. Maybe we’ll dig up up your reports on the Spanish Inquisition and try some things out. First one at a time, then all together._ Crowley’d reeled it off in an emotionless tone, as if he were reporting changes in the wheat market. His face said _I’m in the shit because I love you and I need you to stop coming to me and I don’t want you to._ And Aziraphale knew he should be the one to say _I’ll stay away, even this risk is too much,_ and he couldn’t.

Until.

Maybe he’d needed to make himself angry. It hadn’t seemed like an effort. _An awful lot in common?_ Was that what they were going to call it now? _Stop the dance_ _, either come to me or walk away, but not this._ Not asking for annihilation, as if that’s preferable to the present state of things.

Angels are optimists by nature; he’d never quite imagined how, but somehow he’d always pictured a future when there’d be nothing pulling them apart. Not the End Of Days, that was surely only a Hellish bogey tale, not the redemption of Satan (he’d had some late night debates about that, back in Alexandria, with Origen, who’d eventually talked himself out of the idea), but – something.

And certainly not the whimper of _Give me Holy Water,_ from a demon who was so fragmented and incoherent that he was babbling on about ducks. Had he been at this new laudanum drug that was creeping through every class in London? For a moment he was the angel who’d held that flaming sword and meant it, only it was his tongue that had the edge; if you want to make it into nothing, then I will too _._ He could tell it struck home. _Fraternising._ Centuries of one blowing hot while the other blew cold, until finally they were on the same page, and what an unexpected find this manuscript was. Worthy of collection. Bought at a bitter price.

It had helped him walk away. Back to Soho, back through the door whose chimes clanged like shattering glass, past the creaking stair that didn’t lead to Heaven, to drop into his familiar chair and weep until he couldn’t draw breath, damned good thing he didn’t need to, and the back of his throat was a Hellfire burn. Who was making those ugly, gutted, howling sounds? It certainly wasn’t the song of angels. Maybe he’d Fallen. Fine, we’ll be together.

He’d loosened the lawn stock collar, worked the cord up over his pale curls, held the small silver glyph tight until he realized it was marking his palm. Now it’s just lying across his hand, while he gazes almost incuriously: Put it back on? Cast it away? Find some way to return it? He’s never asked the demon’s address, _if you won’t come to mine then I won’t go to yours._

Finally he opens a lock-and-key cubby meant for precious documents, drops it in.

He listens for the church bells every Sunday, leaves the shop, takes his turn in the park. Crowley doesn’t come. He recalls that backward glance under the olive tree: _Longing, reproach, shock, grief._

_Love._

He tells himself that maybe Persephone’s in the Underworld, but we know that she returns. The first act interval’s interminable. That’s all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An opera by a German composer named Peter von Winter titled _Il ratta di Proserpina_ was in fact the first lead role sung by one of the contraltos of the day, circa 1815. Von Winter's music is still performed (especially his shot at a Magic Flute sequel), but I have yet to fish up any performance of his go at the classic story of Persephone being held captive in the Underworld.
> 
> The third century Neoplatonist Origen was accused of claiming that Satan himself would make confession and seek absolution at the end of time, though he denied saying any such thing (I picture him tossing out the idea as a what-if). Carl Orff took the idea and ran with it in a rather tiring oratorio titled _De Temporum Fine Commedia_ , which amounts to an hour's buildup of rather tuneless shrilling and barking before Satan phases from a coarse croak into a lucid tenor on the words _Pater, peccavi._ Yeah, I think about music too much.


	7. Art Appreciation (A Short Interlude)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation between two members of the Hundred Guineas Club, circa 1895.

“Oh, you’ve been over that shop of his, haven’t you? I must have a look in sometime.”

“It’s extraordinary. Full of all sorts of crannies and recesses, and you could swear they move about. I quite lost an afternoon.”

“Has he any – sprightly books?”

“The withheld chapter of Sir Richard’s _Perfumed Garden_ , if you can believe it. I had heard his widow burnt it.”

“Oh, that settles it, then. When does he open?”

“Gentleman’s hours. Meaning when he pleases. I warn you, don’t try to buy anything. It’s a hobby. There’s money there.”

“Do you suppose he even knew what sort of club he was joining? I’ve never seen him go upstairs. And when I asked him if he saw a bit of crumpet he fancied, I found out more about teacakes and scones than I ever hoped to learn.”

“He was dancing with Reggie the other night. Some fellows do fancy a cock in a frock.”

“Reggie needs a frock just for his cock.”

“Oh, you’ve had him?”

“Who hasn’t? Except our mysterious Mr. Fell, apparently.”

“Particular tastes, perhaps.”

“Or variable. I saw him at the Royal Academy once, positively weeping in front of one of Rossetti’s paintings of Mrs. Morris. The Proserpine one, I believe.”

“Love of Art is the Uranian nature, is it not?”

“I don’t mean simply piping his eye. He seemed quite distraught.”

“Well, well. There must be a story there. ”

“So long as his tongue doesn’t wag.”

“Some would wish it did. I for one.”

“Now you’re teasing. Come here, dear. I’ll make you forget about him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sir Richard Francis Burton -- explorer, linguist and writer (and spy and diplomat and geographer and I'm out of breath now) translated the _Perfumed Garden of the Sheikh Nafzawi_ , an erotic manual, four years before his death in 1890, but the final chapter, about love between men and boys, was redacted before publication. Burton's widow is said to have burned the manuscript for fear of scandal.
> 
> Rossetti's _Proserpina_ shows a brooding woman with cascades of red hair, holding a pomegranate, against a background described in the accompanying sonnet as "Tartarean gray."
> 
> Because yes, this really has become the Head Dump for all the useless liberal-arts type knowledge Copper has ever accumulated.


	8. Notes From Underground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where was Crowley getting his information during the Blitz, anyway?

_1941_

True, there was no etiquette manual for “proper behaviour after being rescued from discorporation by the onetime lover who’s been missing for eighty years,” or “decorous ways to tell someone his shoes are still steaming,” but however those entries might have read, it seemed unlikely that “uncontrollable fits of the silly giggles” would be recommended.

Yet here he was just inside the bookshop entry, knees buckling and eyes watering, the demon’s lean strength holding him up, quaking with shrill hilarity and barely able to stop from doubling over. “You – you – it was like – “ Enough breath for speech wasn’t happening. Another gust; he clamped both hands on Crowley’s forearms, tried to straighten. “You weren’t there – you see – back in the Nineties I – “

“Steady, angel.”

“I shouldn’t – I’m sorry, Crowley – are you _all right?_ That was a _phhft, church –_ that was completely mad of you – but you looked“ – _dear, beautiful, yes, blessed, and kiss this if you don’t like it, Gabriel,_ but also: ”You see, back then I learned the gavotte, quite the s – sp – sprightly little, ah, dance, _snff,_ and all I could think of when you came down that aisle… “ he could hear the hysteria rising in his own voice. “I’m sorry. Are you hurt? Do you need to sit down? I’ve got wine. I’ve got everything. You can get around rationing with a miracle or two.” And then the laughter came back, nearly silent and almost painful.

“It’s okay, angel. I’m fine.” He wasn’t sure how long it took for the near-sobs to subside, standing there with those long arms cinched around him. The shop was huge and silent above them, blackout-dark, the valise full of rare volumes just visible in a thin shaft of moonlight slicing down from the glass cupola overhead.

Amber eyes reflected a faint sheen when he finally looked up. Crowley’s lips barely touching his, his hand on the short curls, were soft, comforting, practically _reverent._ The shock was that it wasn’t shocking; after all these star-crossed centuries, it seemed completely natural.

“Let’s get some of that wine in you, angel. I think you need it more than I do.”

“The cellar’s this way. Here, I’ll take those. Just now I’m keeping all the irreplaceable books down there.”

“And yourself?”

“Sometimes I go down in the Tube. I try to help. People are bearing up, but…”

Dust had settled on everything again; the tremors that went nightly through the earth loosened every grain of grit or plaster and sifted it over furnishings, bottles, floor.

“What _happened_ to you? Where have you been? How did – “

“Cambridgeshire, mostly. Since the war started, anyway.”

“No – I mean since – “

“Recalled,” said Crowly curtly, and tasted the wine. “Ahh, nice, angel. Can’t get this with ration cards.”

The only furnishing down here was an armchair and a small hassock; they sat on the rug, leaning back against the chair, Crowley’s arm over his shoulders as if they hadn’t parted in anger, had always been this easy.

“Once upon a time,” said Crowley, pausing to savor another mouthful – it was a 1933 Chambertin – “there was a bookseller who wanted to do his utmost for the war effort. Even so far as penning a gracious missive to the Imperial Staff at the War Office. Am I getting this right so far?”

“I see I have little to tell you.”

"Apparently he had a rich background in languages living and dead, and was mad for crosswords, which he’d heard was a desired skill. Bit of a top up, there? So – damn. Floor’s cold – “

“Let me treat you to a miracle.” _Snap._

 _“_ Ah. Better. So it was _curious_ when an almost overlooked Enigma message mentioned that one A. Z. Fell had entered into negotiation with representatives of the Third Reich, regarding a selection of rare and remarkable occult books. Right after the Cairncross business – well, you wouldn’t know about that – case you wonder why you never heard back...”

“Oh dear.”

“Had a job convincing them that you were loyal to His Majesty, I can tell you.”

“Them?”

“One small branch of the SS seemed _intensely_ and inexplicably concerned with some of the castles around Toulouse. The boys in Hut 3 naturally wanted to know more about the subject. Someone with field experience and impeccable credentials miraculously appeared.”

“You didn’t.”

“Britain’s been good to me. Most temptable people in the world, long's nothin' gets in the papers... Wasn’t hard to pass muster with the SIS lads at Bletchley, you remember how I got in with Hassan I Sabbah.”

“I always thought you simply had a fad for that _odiferous_ drug – “

“So, well, officially, you were never there tonight. A double-triple cross. Right here in your bomb shelter with your precious first editions the entire time, and Herr Glozier and friends – well, won’t be the first incident of friendly fire in wartime…”

"Thank you, Crowley. It's all right to say that now, isn't it?"

"Just leave the underground work to people who're used to bein' underground? Job, lookin' out for you."

The serpentine eyes were closed, head back against the chair cushion, and in the dim light – power was often out, oftener low – the angular face looked strained and tired.

“Are you certain you’re quite all right? That _was_ a church – I don’t know how you even did it – “

“Been practicing. Building up a bit’ve resistance, you might say. Let’s have a bit more of this – “

“Oh dear Lord. You’re still trying to get it, aren’t you? Please tell me – “

“Angel. If they come for me again, I’m not goin' down without a fight. _Insurance_ doesn’t mean just the one thing.”

“It’s too dangerous. A Doomsday weapon.”

“No fear anyway. Never figured out a way to stay still long enough to get it out’ve the font. Course, _you_ could…”

“The answer is still no. We won’t talk about this.” More softly, “ _Come for you_ ….?”

“Told you, there were knives out. It’s over and done. Ta, don’t let the neighbours know you have this… Backfired on ’em in the end. I didn't give 'em anything, Bubs finally ripped the Dukes a new one for wastin’ her time, said they’d done nothin’ but knock Hell’s _best operative_ out of action for years, so right now their name’s mud and I’m the pretty boy – “

“ _Years – “_

“I said it’s done, angel. Let’s have a look at these books of yours – “

“You don’t read.”

“You’ll want to put them back… “ He was changing the subject, and Aziraphale decided to let him. Felt the trail of fingertips, like Eden’s breeze whispering, in the ends of his hair as he rose to restore the books between their antique bookends on the small shelf of irreplaceables. Maybe it was as simple as that. The touch of hands, and no questions. Questions had always been Crowley’s department, anyway.

The demon was all but sleeping when he turned back, wineglass in danger of toppling to the carpet.

“My dear?”

“Mmmph. Gotta get back and catch a few winks, 'fraid. Did take it out of me a bit.”

“You could sleep here. It’s very safe.”

“You don’t want that, angel. Already barred from usin’ the cot in the back room at Bletchley. Lads say I sleep too noisy.”

“I’m not bothered by a little snoring.”

“Not that kind of noisy. You _don’t_ want to hear it, trust me.”

“Maybe I ought to.”

The silence ticked on just a second too long; another kiss like the first, and he could tell it too was a bookend: _this has to hold what’s between us for now._ “Bit soon to push my luck. Usin’ a miracle to get a church bombed won’t be hard to write up, but can't take chances…”

Aziraphale rested his forehead on the suitcoated shoulder.

“I’d promise to leave a candle in the window for you, but, well, the blackout…”

“Bad idea on so many levels. I'll be going.” But he didn't move to leave; then: "D'ye know why I didn't break? Because every third thing they asked me was about you. And as long as I thought about you, I couldn't break." A last brush of lips over the short curls. “No, you stay down here. See myself out. Need to keep things underground for now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bletchley Park was the nerve centre of British Intelligence from 1938 on, and kept a tight lid on its operations; most of what we know wasn't revealed till decades later. Messages in Germany's Enigma code were decrypted there ("Hut 3" designated the team charged with evaluating them). The government did, in fact, recruit crossword enthusiasts as codebreakers. (Fun fact: author currently lives within a pole vault of Bletchley's opposite number in the States, and it's still Spook City.)
> 
> The SS did sponsor an expedition to the area of Montsegur (Google the name "Otto Rahn" if you want to dive down a really _deep_ rabbit hole). Accounts vary on what they thought the Grail was, but apparently the occult enthusiasts of the Third Reich were sure it was there. The soberest theory suggests the search was for some of the documents that had been squirreled away after the 1244 siege ended -- a fragment of knowledge that made me smile broadly when Mr. Harmony suggested the Fuhrer would appreciate the Grail too, if Aziraphale were to run across it.


	9. O Lente, Lente Currite Noctis Equii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A slightly heretical take on _you go too fast._

_Run slowly, slowly, horses of the Night!_

_Soho, 1967_

He was, by the angel’s rough prediction, about ten or twelve minutes late. He must have spent a good long time in the Bentley, or at the corner, before deciding to cross and try the door. Aziraphale looked up over his glasses, past the volume of sonnets that he’d been reading without taking it in. It was hard to see anything but the glint of the sunglasses, because he was seated in a cone of warm lamplight; that, and what might have been a faint sheen below the sharp cheekbones. Somehow that made him speak more angrily, when he did.

“You could have planned this – this _folly_ anywhere in London. In Britain. In the entire world. Why right under my nose?”

No response other than a swipe across one cheek with the heel of his thumb. Somehow the gesture had the flavour of a two-finger salute. The demon’s expression was mulish and defiant, what could be seen of it. Aziraphale waited a moment, then answered for him.

“Because you wanted me to find out. Because you wanted it from my hand. I don’t know why, but there, it’s done.”

“Trust you. That’s why.”

“What, to give you something that could kill you? I don’t know why I’m even speaking to you at the moment.”

“ ‘Cos’ you left that door open.”

Which was, of course, completely correct, and maddening, that being what the demon did best.

“And then it’s _drop me somewhere,_ if you please. As if I have anywhere to be but here. You forced my hand, Crowley, and then you tried to run away from it.”

Belatedly, he slammed the book closed. “All right. Tell me the rest.” He rose, uncorked a bottle – it had become their ritual, offered now like a grudging tithe – and set the second glass down on the side table instead of passing it into Crowley’s hand. Lifted his own in a perfunctory, silent toast. “I’m waiting.”

Long swallow. Aziraphale winced; old Burgundy deserved better treatment.

“Look. It’s not just about me any more.” Hand raked up through the fashionable pageboy. When had he adopted that ridiculous haircut? “There’s _going_ to be an Antichrist. Not tomorrow, But it’s startin’ to sound like less than a mortal lifetime. Short enough, aren’t they?”

Aziraphale thought of Marlowe, Keats, Schubert; didn’t answer.

“Workin’ out the logistics, best I can suss out. When they do it’ll be on our doorstep. Armageddon. Everyone dyin’ all over again. Your lot’s as keen on it as mine, you know that.”

“You’re overreacting to something. We are hardly in the End Times.” _We can’t be, because then I’d have to make a choice I can’t make._

“Wasn’t wrong before, was I? Look, they’re _eejits,_ no smarter than She made ’em, but they deserve a chance. Even _I_ always gave ’em a chance.”

“Crowley, it’s a _prophecy._ I specialize in prophecies. I _knew_ Nostradamus. Absolute mountebank. And Patmos was full of those odd fungi, you remember, from the Dionysia…”

“Worst morning head I ever had.” Crowley facepalmed in vivid sense-memory, head back against the couch cushions, not quite hiding a rueful grin. Maybe the haircut wasn’t quite so stupid.

“You almost couldn’t change back from a snake.” Damn him – if that wasn’t redundant – you couldn’t stay angry with him. “I had a time keeping the girls away, they all wanted to run off with you...”

“Just jealous.”

No reading the expression behind those chic lenses. Step over the creaky stair. “So – I’d take John the Divine with a grain of salt. There's only been one book of prophecies that was a hundred per cent accurate even in the lifetime of its author, and no one in three centuries has laid hands on the work of Agnes Nutter.”

“So _that’s_ why you’ve been pilin’ up this collection all this time.”

“It simply became an interest,” said Aziraphale unconvincingly.

Crowley stared back, unconvinced.

“Look, the Dukes’ve never forgiven me for the rippin’ Bubs gave ’em after… after. Already makin’ my life – um, miserable poppin’ in through the telly or the radio, never know when one’ve the bastards’ll remind me they still have an eye on me. When this happens, they’ll find some way to drop me in the middle of it.”

“And how does having Holy Water help?”

“Might need to take on some of my own lot.”

“You _can’t.”_

“Why not?”

_Keep that desk between you. Close your eyes and say it. No, don’t say it. Close your fists around it till the nails dig in. It slips through your fingers anyhow, like the water as you blessed it._

“Because you’re too. _Damned._ Precious. To me.”

The silence drew out.

“Y’sound right stroppy about it,” said Crowley softly.

“Find another way,” said Aziraphale. “Something safer. When He’s born, or comes into His own. You’ll know. Maybe… I don’t know, stop time, the way you did in Paris? Until you can… find Him and deal with Him? You told me Hell can’t even reach you when you do that. Or Heaven, I assume.”

“We’re talkin’ about a _kid_ , angel. And I can’t do it indefinitely. Never tested the limit – a few hours, maybe, if I give it everything I’ve got…”

A faint, tinny sound of awful music from the late-night rites outside.

Things that would be forgotten by morning, denied in daylight.

“Then try it? For me.”

Crowley looked up at him blankly.

“If we truly think this is going to happen. Do it. Please.”

“What, y'mean _now_?”

“Gabriel likes to pop in too,” said the angel simply.

Crowley rose, set down the glass, took a step toward the shopfront. Soho was at a late-evening simmer, the blinking sign at the club on the far corner delivering its message in a succession of red, orange, blue flashes. At Crowley's snap it froze on red, making him a forthright Hellthing against the dim backdrop of crammed shelves and hoarded treasures, Mephistophilis in Faustus' library. Aziraphale was all but sure Marlowe'd written with Crowley in mind. Remembered him overhearing Will's prediction: _You two were lovers at one time. And I wager will be again._ Dead a year after saying _Not if I get there first._

When Crowley turned he was there to lift the glasses away. _Nothing like the Sun_.

“I want to see your eyes, when I do this,” he said.

He tasted of Burgundy and salt, and the sound could have been a brief sob or a muffled _oh_ of surprise. The hair wasn’t silly at all, really; just long enough to lace fingers in, to pull his head down. After a moment the long arms slipped around the angel, not holding him up this time, but pulling him in almost breathlessly tight. _She’d spread her abaya under the olive tree, all slenderness and glassy delicacy._ This was wiry strength, and a woody breath of some fashionable cologne mingled with stale smoke from the club he’d been in, and the sharpness of shoulderblades through the wool of the black sweater. He wanted the demon either way, had never stopped wanting.

It became evident that the sentiment was returned.

“I’ve, ah – never, with anyone in this shape – I had opportunities, but -- “

“I can change. But we’d lose some time.”

“We’ll manage as is. A few hours?”

“Long enough."

Aziraphale thumbed off the lamp as they crossed to the stair.

_* * *_

"Still counts as a miracle, not somethin' we can get away with again, they'd start to notice... I'll have to make up something about an extra-ripe temptation."

"You said not to joke about that." Fondly, running a finger over those eloquent lips, to be nipped by the sharp little canines.

“Why now? After all this time?”

Apparently the other fingers needed the same attention, in case they felt left out.

“In case we have to fight each other. I wanted to have this.”

“Whole point’s makin’ sure we never do.”

"If it is Her Plan -- I don't know what we _can_ do -- "

"Never believe the corporate mission statement."

He hadn’t expected Crowley’s touch, in this form, to be so tender, so gradual. Even now, the fingertips didn’t stop roving lightly over him, just this side of tickling; filing away, he thought, an index of his shape, a tactile sculpture that would stay in memory when time resumed. He was stamping his own senses at least as avidly with the subtle difference in the taste of the pale skin, the holly-blossom scent of spent desire.

“And if there _are_ Horsepersons and they do ride? What then?”

“Don’t know, angel. Think of something.”

“You’re beautiful like this.”

“All skin ‘n’ bones.”

“ _Beautiful." (They told us our mortal forms would show who we were.)_ "I hope I – ah – _managed_ well enough for you – “

“You’re an angel. You couldn’t do anything wrong.”

“You _would_ tell me that.”

“Do better. Show you.”

“Already?

“Too fast?”

“Mhm. No. We _are_ in a bit of a race."

Even so, he took his time about the kiss.

_"O lente, lente currite noctis equii."_

_* * *_

“I think it’s starting to slip. That sign.”

“Hm?”

“A little more orange.”

“Dozed off. Sorry.”

“I wish you could sleep right there – “ The mussed hair against his chest _did_ tickle, but that was fine. The almost-too-slow-to-notice change in the light outside wasn’t. “I suppose you’ll have to go. Again. We left your glasses downstairs.”

“Keep those. Got plenty in the Bentley.”

“When do you suppose – “

“Dunno. Depends what they send me.”

“At least now you can phone. These clever mortals.”

“They get some things right. Oh, _dammit._ ” The sign was phasing slowly to blue. “Stay there. Know my way." Red again now, Mephistophilis hot from Hell. "I’ll call. Dunno when.”

They'd pretend it never happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kit Marlowe (whom we last saw on the tavern floor) gave a line from Ovid’s _Amores_ to his Doctor Faustus: _Run slowly, slowly, horses of the Night!_ Ovid’s original words were spoken by a lover; Marlowe’s Faustus, having bargained away his soul, commanded that Time stand still to delay his hour of reckoning with Lucifer.
> 
> St. John the Divine, who floated the whole Armageddon thing in the Book of Revelations, may have been inadvertently doing shrooms or ergot, or could just have been high on his own supply. Opinions vary.


	10. Closed Doors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a long six years at the Dowling residence.

Maybe it’ll happen like this: _you’ll be trimming the hedge, or putting the rockery to rights, exuding the aura of someone who’s never had a subtle thought in his life, whose idea of reading matter is the Sutton’s Garden Catalogue. She’ll be walking past the little formal rose display with Warlock, and you’ll hear her say “Oh! Let’s go say hello to Brother Francis.” And the pestilent little larva – how Nanny stays so unflappable, you can’t imagine – will barely pause as he rockets by, because he’s got no patience for the gardener’s homilies about how all lives are precious and virtue is better than power (there's time, there's still time). But she’ll bend gracefully to admire the shape of a topiary or the fall of a cascade of creeping phlox, and whisper “It’ll be unlocked tonight.”_

 _And when it’s late, late enough that the larva’s sure to have gone to sleep over his video game (because Nanny still sleeps on the other side of a communicating door, as if he’d ever call in the night for anything) – late enough that all you can hear is the ostentatious grandfather clock ticking on the landing at the other end of the hall – you’ll pad down the thick runner, barefoot in pyjamas and dressing-gown, with that Sutton’s Catalogue rolled in the pocket. Shed the tweaks to your appearance that make you look harmless and a little foolish; the hallway’s dim, you’re ready with an explanation for being there,_ couldn’t sleep, thought I’d fix a spot of cocoa. _The cook’s got a soft spot for you because of the kitchen garden, told you to feel free anytime._

_But you don’t need your story, no one’s afoot, the security detail’s out in the grounds, only the moon sees you press down the brass S of the doorhandle and inch it open with a soft creak. The house isn’t cold but you’re shivering as you ease the door shut and latch it, and she’s all heat and laughter under the comforter. “Almost ssstarted without you,” she’ll tease. “You’re late.” And you’ll shush her with your mouth, you’ve been thinking of nothing else since tea-time (which the barbarians in this house rarely observe) -- no, be honest, you've been thinking of it since that night in Soho -- and the difficulty isn’t keeping silent so much as it is holding back. She can sense it, she knows you as no one else does, not Gabriel, not the poets and painters who’ve seen your heart bare with her face etched on it; maybe not even Her._

_So she’ll wrap around you, tug your short curls, paint your cheeks with soft kisses that bank the fire a little, make it last. She’s so fine-boned, so spare and slender, like the youths that decked themselves in rouge and taffeta for Will’s plays._ The master-mistress of my passion. _There’s not a chord in Heaven you’d rather hear than the soft hisses as you find your way to her through most of her nightclothes, no knowing when this might have to end in a hurry. Stretch her arms up over her head, pressing the delicate wrists into the linen, you can tell she likes that, murmuring into her ear: “He laid hold of that serpent and bound her a thousand years, and set his seal upon her.”_

_When the amber-sheened eyes finally open, she’ll be smiling._

_“That won’t go in your report, sssurely.”_

_And that’s the best part of this story that you tell yourself in the dark: not the shared warmth, not just that she lets you in, but the knowledge that there’s no weight on her heart when you love her in this form, that the loss of that first time’s healed, that she’s merry enough to mock._

_“I’ll tell them that thwarting you kept me, ah, up far into the night.”_

_“I’ll tell them your attemptsss to restrain me only sharpened my wilesss.”_

_And you’ll risk a soft laugh, easy, because you know it’s going to work._

_That’s the other story you tell yourself._

* * *

Or maybe it’ll be like this: _the sheds are well away from the formal garden, in a little dip on the edge of the property, because rich people enjoy the pretense that the splendor of their existence just happens, as part of their birthright. You know the sound of those sensible shoes on the gravel path, you know that the family’s off at the Embassy today, with the sullen little Hellspawn decked out in those expensive clothes that he hates, on full display at an orchestral performance. He’ll be a monster tomorrow, but right now it’s just you pretending to look for those rose cages you saw only the other day, the staff up at the house, and Nanny taking a turn in the fresh air. Light spears across the floorboards as the door opens wider, blinks out again as it shuts, you’re all but in darkness._

_“Thought I’d find you here,” she says in your ear, the voice low and teasing, wrapping her arms around you from behind. Only the jaw against the back of your neck is a little rough, the hands cinched at your middle large and knobbly. You suck in a breath as you feel what’s pressed against you._

_“Took a fancy to be this way for a while,” he says. “Afternoon off.” The embrace is tight, but you turn yourself around, lapping into the still-lipsticked mouth, palming up the front of the slim skirt._

_“Nanny appears to have a secret,” you observe, so close to his ear that you know it tickles._

_“You said something the other day about a cock in a frock.”_

_“It was a very rude question, Crowley, that I didn’t expect to have asked of me at a gentlemen’s club.”_

_“Well, do you fancy it or not?”_

_“If it’s you?” He’s left the hair long and curling, still full of that warm burnt scent that likely hails from Hell, not that you care._

_“Hm, gardener’s been raising something that wasn’t called for. Nanny may have to administer correction.” And that makes you shiver and laugh at the same time, and you dare him._

_You’re light with one another, free, and soon you’ll be freer, because it’s all going to be all right._

* * *

This is what really happens:

You’re pruning the rhododendrons – they tangle, and somehow always seem dusty, and a discreet miracle’s sometimes necessary to tame the way they regularly exceed their commission – and you hear Nanny coaxing Warlock into the garden, _get on outdoors that lovely day, do you mean to rule all the kingdoms of the world from in front of your Playstation?_

“Nanny, what will I have to do?”

“Anything you like. You’ll have all the power.”

“Like going up a level?”

“All the levels, poppet. When the world’s remade, it’ll be you who makes it. You can get rid of all the foolish rules and the people who write them. You can be rude to people who deserve it, and there’ll be no scolding. You won’t have to wear a suit. Everyone will have to do what you say, or you’ll… turn them into something.”

“Will _you_ have to do what I say?”

“I hope you’ll still take Nanny’s advice.”

“What shall I do for you?”

“You could… bring back lost things. There was an artist I knew once, an inventor – “

“I hate art class.”

“You’d’ve liked him. He made wonderful things. You could make real dinosaurs, instead of just pretending the way She did – “

“Like Jurassic Park? Wizard. I could ride a velociraptor.”

“And – did Nanny ever tell you about unicorns?”

“There’s no such thing as unicorns.”

“But there could be. If you decided.”

“If I can stay up an hour later? There’s a Doctor Who marathon on Channel One.”

“We’ll talk about it.”

They round the corner of the rhododendron hedge, and she waves. Later she’ll bring out a flask – Thaddeus Dowling keeps an expensive liquor cupboard, and can’t be bothered to notice what’s missing – and you’ll sit at opposite ends of a garden bench, passing it back and forth and comparing what you’ve told your Head Offices. You’ll both roll your eyes at what the imp said this time, and try to persuade yourselves he’s on the right road.

Then you’ll go back to your rooms, separately, and close the doors.

That’s what really happens.


	11. What Is Before Me And What Is Behind Me (A Brief Lyric Interlude)

_Soho, 2019_

Oh, God, he was going to have to choose.

And he was starting to be afraid that God wasn’t going to be much help.

Unless perhaps –

It was awkward rolling up the rug, but it finally stayed put. He’d drawn the circle on the floor of the shop for emergencies – in case he needed a question answered, or guidance, and the Head Office wasn’t responding. Well, this time he had a question that Someone needed to hear.

_They’re saying that his closest friend denied him._

Could She really have meant Her world to endure this tug of war forever? Each side always canceling the other out, struggling till Good and Evil became indistinguishable, scorching the ground between them?

 _We may have both started as angels, but_ you _are fallen._

Maybe he and Crowley had been meant to find that middle way. Truce, and seeing humanity through one another’s eyes.

_We have nothing whatsoever in common._

Except for the entire turning, confusing, thrice-broken, thrice-mended, drunken, deluded, glorious, beloved Earth.

_When I see the world and do not see my boy,_ _he that has an amber shade in his hair…_

Chalk over the smears from years of treading across the carpet. It wouldn’t do to get this the slightest bit wrong, or he could end up conversing with a demon. That’s how this all started.

_My Mother has said to me not to be talking with you today,_ _or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;_ _It was a bad time she took for telling me that…_

Those golden eyes, in that world that was still so innocent, asking the question that the mortals had answered both Yes and No.

_What if I did the right thing, with the whole eat-the-apple business?_

Some of them believed that he had, and they'd gone to the fire for it. No reason the rest of them should.

_I’m going home, angel. I’m getting my stuff. And I’m leaving. And when I’m off in the stars, I won’t even think about you._

For a moment he’d wavered. Run away together?

_You promised me a thing that is not possible…_

The curse of knowing so many poets, over so many centuries, is that the words that will crack your heart open are never further away than a vagrant recollection.

_You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west from me;_ _you have taken what is before me and what is behind me --_

He might have fucked it up high, wide and handsome, but maybe the world had a chance. What did he have left to lose?

_You have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;_ _and my fear is great that you have taken God from me._

Only one way to find out.

And maybe, if he could get Her on the line, he’d ask about that apple.

He opened the cubby, drew out candles, a bell. Behind them, a charm on a leather cord. After a moment’s thought he lifted it out and tucked it into his inside jacket pocket, over his heart.


	12. A Thing That Is Not Possible

“That reminds me.”

They’d toasted the world, and after that a good many of the things in it, and the dining room of the Ritz was beginning to swim ever so slightly even around their cast-iron heads.

“I’ve got something of yours. It slipped my mind, what with everything.”

The little _gimel_ on its leather cord had been in the jacket pocket since he spoke to Heaven. Apparently, since he’d known it was there, Adam had restored it along with everything else.

“I wore it for a long time. At one point I wasn’t sure… well, when I was trying to reach Her. It made me think.”

“ ‘Bout what?”

“Your Cathar friends. All about there being two sides, just like our old Head Offices. The only dispute was over which was the _right_ side. You knew all along. Having sides is where things start to go wrong...”

“Let me put it back on’y’, then. Meant y’t’have it… fiddly, always too many clothes, you…”

“Dear. Perhaps that trick of yours. Just for a moment, whoops, we’re becoming a spectacle.”

“Trick? Oh, right.”

Crowley snapped. The dining room froze in tableau, while the angel undid his tie and collar, to let the cord drop inside his shirt properly. Crowley poised to snap again as he redid the knot.

“Not just yet, dear.”

The kiss drew out.

“We really should be leaving. No slipping off while I settle the bill?”

"Never again, angel."

* * *

_Tadfield_

_A Week Later_

[Voiceover: God]

_Adam had rebooted reality. He had changed the past and changed the present. So, on Sunday, people woke to find a world that was almost – but not entirely – the one they used to inhabit._

“Can’t say I had the chance to look, angel. The car was on bloody fire. Bit distracting.”

“No more did I, for the most part. But enough to see it’s a lovely place, though I don’t know if the perfect weather will persist. He’s just a human child now, after all.”

“Far’s we know.”

“I think that’s the turnoff… She said she’d meet us by the orchard north of town. Quite the apple country up here, I thought you’d like that.”

For answer Crowley only put his hand over the angel’s; it was surprising how easy and ordinary it was, as if they’d always been this way, and not looking over their shoulders, or losing and finding each other over and again.

“Ten and two, dear.”

“Still about the rules, you.” But the demon put both hands back on the wheel. “How’d she get hold of you?”

“Apparently I’d marked the book at one point with an old business card. She seemed to think we’d be interested in something… you know all the things that Adam did, the flying saucers, the Kraken business. He seems to have gotten them out of some magazine of hers. She wanted an occult being’s opinion, but I told her I was ethereal.”

“Pretty solid to me.”

“Drive, dear.”

It was dark enough that it was hard to read the ordnance map, and far enough from a good signal that Siri kept cutting out. Finally the angel manifested a bit of divine light while they idled in a lay-by.

“Ah, here we are – -we missed a turning about a quarter mile back.”

“Right then. Hm, long’s we’re parked…”

“Ah – Crowley – this is a bit, well, adolescent.”

“Don't feel a day over three thousand tonight. Humour me.”

“And I’m sure she’s waiting. We’ve lost some time.”

“Right you are. Makin’ up for it.” As if there’d never been any weight on his heart.

“You fiend. Just drive.”

The American witch was standing in the last of twilight, at the grass verge above the long slope down to the shadows of an orchard. Her round spectacles reflected moonlight, her dark-blue skirts faded into the dimness.

“Newt stayed back at the cottage. You should come by and really meet him after, he’s still trying to figure it all out…”

“It seemed to me he _was_ the one who figured it all out.”

“In a special way. I can’t let him near the coffeemaker.”

“Well, there’s nothing like a proper cup of tea.”

“So what’re we here to look at?”

“Down the hill.”

The angel squinted, but couldn’t make out anything. “Crowley?”

“It’s the kids. Down there by the first row of apple trees. Helpin’ themselves, from the look’ve it.”

“Naturally you approve.”

“Habits die hard.”

“They’ve been coming here every night,” said the witch. “They finally asked me to come along a couple of nights ago… That was when I called you. Adam really did take the _New Aquarian_ to heart. He’s a smart kid.”

The angel’s eyes were adjusting slowly. Adam’s was the only pale head of the four; otherwise there was no distinguishing one of the Them from another – the voices that carried occasionally all the same timbre, the movements equally child-limber and careless. No, wait – his eyes weren’t adjusting; there was a faint light coming from under the trees.

“Here we go,” said Anathema. “The Tibetans and Atlantis were a little too disruptive, I guess, but when I cornered Adam about it he said he wanted to keep these. I think it was last December’s issue.”

The faint glow prinked out the silhouettes of the children a little more clearly, outlined low branches and even showed up the reds and yellows of low-hanging fruits, until from between the twisted trunks two white forms stepped out, slender forelegs lifting higher than a horse’s, less briskly than a goat’s. The long single horns shed a pale radiance that pooled on the grass around the Them, outlined Pepper’s silhouette as one of the creatures dropped its head for her to stroke. A little of the same luminescence sifted out of the mane.

“I think they stay up in the hills in the daytime,” said the witch. “But a couple of hikers spotted them, that Advertiser paper had a laugh… Do you want to go down?”

Crowley was having trouble with his voice.

“Won’t we frighten them off, dear?”

“Not if we don’t startle them. I guess Adam’s a little young to have understood the whole legend, it’s nice to be able to touch them, they’re soft. Like alpacas.”

It sank in.

One white, silver-horned head lifted as Crowley uttered in a tongue that the angel hadn’t heard in four thousand years; followed with a whistle. The children looked up.

The unicorn cantered toward them over the grass.

_finis_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last two chapter titles and internal verses taken, full circle, from Augusta Gregory’s _Donal Og_ , posted in the notes of Chapter One.
> 
> Written with a fond affection for Peter Beagle’s Last Unicorn, at the end of which they all came back from the sea.
> 
> If you’ve stuck with this historical ramble/head-dump/plague season anguish fic, thanks! Any requests for naughty comedy?
> 
> If you liked, share, reblog, comment! Come say hello on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech


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